"My savvy look you makee all same eye," chuckled Ping. "Top-side pidgin! One piecee fine bizness."
Then, abruptly, Ping had a swift, paralyzing thought.
"Mebbyso Melican men makee chase fo' McGloly and Ping, huh?" he cried. "Plaps we lun, ketchee Matt, no lettee Melican men ketchee us?"
"Oh, shucks, Ping!" exclaimed McGlory disgustedly. "When you forget yourself, now and then, and do a particularly bright thing, you spoil it all by some break of that sort. Those punchers don't know where we're going! And what sort of a trail are we leaving?" The cowboy turned and looked back over the ground they had covered. "All buffalo grass," he finished, "and the Tin Cup outfit couldn't run us down in a thousand years."
But Ping's fears persisted, in spite of McGlory's attempt to smother them.
"My no likee," he quavered, pausing again and again to look back as they traveled. "Mebbyso they ketchee, they takee scalp. My no likee. Losee pigtail, no go back to China ally mo'."
"Well, well, don't blubber about it!" exclaimed McGlory. "You'll keep the pigtail, all right, though what in Sam Hill it's good for is more than I know. Buck up, step high, wide, and handsome, and don't lose so much time looking around. Just stow it away in your mind, Ping, that every step on the trail to the river brings us that much closer to Pard Matt."
McGlory took the lead and set a brisk pace.
"Didn't Matt get away in great shape?" he called out, as he strode along. "And that rope Spearman tied to the machine didn't amount to a row of dobies."
"Cloud Joss heap fine fo' tlavel," remarked Ping. "Feet tlavel plenty tough fo' China boy."